Man, you are doing great work on your max and your weight. Watch out for all that food tomorrow and have a happy thanksgiving.

Monte

Really nice work!  How much do the wings weigh when finished?? I'd build a V-max if I were going to get a sport license, worked on a private years ago... but at my age now (65) I'm thinking ultralight... again, nice work!!!

I do not have a finished weight on wings. This is the Vmax so I imagine the wings are much heavier than the  1100 series aircraft. TEAM claims a dry weight of 400 lbs for the plane. But I have heard of weights in the 435-450 range.

I added the 1/4 inch stock to trailing edge on either side of each rib in order to avoid the dreaded lift of TE. Also as you may remember I decided to cap strip the ribs and TE with the 1.5 mm plywood . That has been added to the bottom of wing. I feel it is important to insure there is no twist in wing at all during this period and especially when the plywood is rolled onto LE . Do this every time so as not to introduce any unwanted wash in or wash out. Also when gluing on end pieces of plywood (534pcs) to inboard and outboard doubled ribs. life a lot easier when time to varnish if you coat bottom of drag bars and recessed rear spar cap BEFORE gluing the plywood on ( guess how I found this out) Also I coat the inside of theses plywood pieces with a thin coat of epoxy before applying them. That area can be a bit of a bear to varnish after completed. Or a better way to approach it at this stage is say to yourself "before I glue this piece on will I be able to varnish this area later".... If the answer is no..... protect it with epoxy or varnish before you glue!!!!!Sorry I ment to take pics of that step but forgot!

Weight update! Add 3 more pound to the closer to fly category! .  That's a total of 50.9 pounds since build has begun!

Great work. Yes a twist in the wing is no good at all.

Monte

Looks great, BB.  And I bought a box of those clips to do my trailing edges - they're a perfect solution, so thanks!

Well done on the weight loss. To keep my MTOW down, I've dropped 16 kg since I started my build (being metric over here). The Max is a great weight-loss tool   "Eat less & fly higher"

Bruce

Wow that's 35.2 lbs if my conversion is correct! The more we loose the better it will fly!

Wow guys, y'all are getting 2 bangs for your bucks.

Monte

Quoted from texasbuzzard

Wow guys, y'all are getting 2 bangs for your bucks.

Monte

Sure am! It's a win win........Team Minimax style

Congrats to both you and Bruce. I am sure losing weight is hard and I admire anyone who can do it and then keep it off. Your family is probably glad you are building a v- max, I'm sure your v- max is.

Monte

Looking very good on the wings. Your ability is fantastic and the pictures are great also.  

Thank you for the kind words and encouragement everybody. The top of wing now has the rib caps strips, cap strips around tank area and TE cap strips glued in place. While waiting for that to dry I am preparing the LE of aileron for sheeting!

Also beginning to fit wingtip.....

Man you're fast! Excelent job BB, you're doing a fantactic work on your V-Max and a much better on yourself...What a lesson!

Thanks for the kind and supportive words Everybody! You  guys are great here!

Fuel tank cover drilled cut and screwed in place. Wingtip drilled and screwed in place. LE of aileron all sanded and varnished along with sheeting for LE of aileron also cut and varnished!


Weight loss continues 1.8 lbs closer to flying this week! Total loss 51.7 since construction has began

Aileron LE varnished and sheeting also varnished

I've always been curious about a few things regarding the drooped wingtips. How far to they extend past the flat ply of the wingtip? Are your drooped tips from MiniMAX or ?, fiberglass or ?, and did you ever weigh them?

I've always read that drooped wingtips, and Hoerner tips for that matter, serve the purpose of "simulating" a longer wing, but does anyone know by how much? For instance...would they provide enough benefit to build a MiniMAX wing 1 bay shorter (124" vs 139") and the wing still behave like a normal 139" wing?

Great looking work and nice steady progress on your MiniMAX, bigbrixx! Keep it up, and also congrats again on your continued weight control progress. You'll have your girl-ish figure back in no time!  

Lynn

On Wing Tips:
There have over the years been many theories about the "best" wing tip and indeed the best plan form for the wings.  All of it revolves around the problem of "tip vortices" and how you deal with them to reduce drag.  As we have learned more we have gained a bit in efficiency but it really isn't all that much.  Certainly it wouldn't be enough to justify reducing total span.  The biggest breakthrough, still not widely known or used, and still not pinned down to a fully defined mathematical process are tips intended not just to "manage" or "reduce" tip vortices, but to actually harness them for additional lift.  You will see this in some of the newer composite aircraft which have somewhat crescent shaped tips on their wings.  However even here you can't just make something that looks like a crescent, you have to experiment with the average angle of rake, the degree of curvature in plan form and where to transform from a radiused leading edge to a wedge shaped leading edge.

The drooped tips may or may not give a net gain.  Remember they are normally just screwed to the outer part of the wing with the screw heads and inboard ends exposed to the air flow.  Unless this is all perfectly faired in quite flawlessly and perfectly smooth it probably isn't going to gain much performance over a plain squared off tip.

I'm afraid I don't have a good list of references on this.  The information is too fragmented, incomplete, and contradictory.

Tom

The wing tips only add about 6 inches to each wing. They are TEAM wingtips. My plan is to fly the plane without the wingtips then put them in to see if they justify the extra weight. I still have to weight them. I will do that and post the weight over the next couple days. BTW TEAM makes
no promises that they do anything to improve flight performance

Thanks, bigbrixx! Interesting that there's no performance claim for the drooped wingtips. Keep up the progress. We all enjoy seeing it.

Lynn

Finished up the fuel tank area. I feel One  of the potential problems with the setup on the plans is the tank straps are held in with the same screws that hold down the tank plexiglass cover. Trying to line up the straps then secure the cover has been problematic. What I did on wing 2 and will retrofit to wing one....is to drill, tap and countersink 4-4/40 x 1/2 socket head bolts to secure the straps in place. Then it is easy to secure the tank cover. The pictures show it best

Sheeting  rolled and glued on LE of Aileron. Did a couple of things different here. When applying epoxy to sheeting I found heating up epoxy with heat gun made it flow MUCH better. Also I made up some clips that slide over the trailing edge to allow use of elastic bands to hold sheeting in place; before securing with clamps and staples. I also put in a photo of slot in aileron sheeting that is necessary for center hinge. I did the first Aileron improperly and need to go back and fix it. It will be any easy fix. But a photo would have saved me a couple hours here! One more note. The best way I feel to bend the sheeting around the LE is to dampen it with water on outside then glue. All the soaking. Then preforming/ clamping/ drying  I did on aileron one is really not necessary on the aileron LE. The sheeting is thin and much more flex able the he wing LE. I used a foam brush to apply water to the one side! Epoxy very thin on other side of plywood. Then held in position with elastic band and finally clamped and stapled in place.........And of course I included a photo of me in the build for both the ladies and the FAA

A few more pics...you can see the clips I made to hold elastic bands clearly in these photos

Looks like I have been spending too much time in the basement! I had a visitor! Sorry ladies, it turns out I am still married! The wife came down the stairs to see if I am ok.... It appears she hasn't seen me in a few days except for bathroom breaks and coffee refills! oh well she is dragging me out to go shopping. Something about Christmas?????? I guess it is soon.......also to a movie! I hope it is about airplanes!!!! ( but we all know that's unlikely)

You keep losing weight and you'll need to change your forum name  to just "brixx1",  no more "big".......

Very nice work.  Are the wing tanks the Team 5 gal ones,  or the 6 gal ones?

Hi Termite....... Or Maybe "not as big as I used to be bri" !!!!  Another 3.8 lbs lost this week. Total loss 55.5 lbs  they are the 6 gallon TEAM tanks. They fit very nicely. The plans are for the 5 gallon tanks. Very slight modification is required from the plans.

WOW 55.5 lbs that is a lot AWESOME.  

Capstrips glued to top and bottom of aileron. All has been sanded. Fuel tank area complete! Wing is completed ready to varnish! Hope to have it varnished and at hanger by next weekend. Then I will extend bench and begin the fuse by first of the year!

Couple more pics. Also notice the contraption I made up to varnish. Saw it in an old EAA book by filling the oil can with varnish then drilled into the brush and added a brass tube. Connect the two components together with about 4 feet clear tubing.  The plan is to save time by keeping the brush loaded with varnish from the oil can. The inventor states it saves 2/3 of the time. I will update you all on how it works later this week

You are going faster than a speeding bullet and if you are wearing a cape and have an "s" on your chest you really do not need a Max but look out for kryptonite (lol). The varnish system is very Interesting.Please let us know how it works out.